Nighttime and metagaming

[jovial 17]

I wanted to get a feel for how the community felt about nighttime, and I hope Dean Hall will take feedback on this subject and not be a slave to some idea of immersion.

 

I'd love night to be dark, and having to use ingame tools to survive it. However I believe the VAST majority of players will simply alter gamma settings, either ingame, through external applications or monitor settings. And with that, it throws all your work on night time, fancy flashlights, lamps, etc out the window.

 

I hope Hall will try to adapt to this, by making night much brighter. Think moon in the DayZ mod, and then some. Yeah, there should be practically no use for flashlights or the like, but at least we can play without being forced to turn up gamma (which breaks immersion a LOT more than having a naturally brighter night IMO),

[TheRedScare 353]

Even with full brightness you still need a light to loot indoors, its pitch black.

[Entaro (DayZ) 33]

Even full moon nights and such "bright night" mods as you can play on the mod still warrant the usage of gamma-jacking, just lessens the benefit of it.  At the same time, these "bright nights" reduce the utility of the very things that make night fun - flares, chemlites, flashlights, etc...  Its pretty much a loose-loose.  Even if they disabled in-game gamma, you can still run the game windowed and use the Nvidia control panel to jack gamma.

 

 

 

Even with full brightness you still need a light to loot indoors, its pitch black.

 

All you gotta do is run around aimlessly with your inventory screen open and watch things pop in and out of your vicinity column.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Entaro

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

All you gotta do is run around aimlessly with your inventory screen open and watch things pop in and out of your vicinity column.

 

I was thinking about this while doing it. It's actually pretty immersive if you think about it as your hands feeling around in the darkness. You still have to get right on top of the item to see it.

Edited December 17, 2013 by bad_mojo

[Entaro (DayZ) 33]

I was thinking about this while doing it. It's actually pretty immersive if you think about it as your hands feeling around in the darkness. You still have to get right on top of the item to see it.

 

I dono about immersive.  It kinda defeats the purpose of them hiding loot in nooks and crannies if you can have it just automatically pop up.

[SlickShoes 21]

I enjoyed the feel of the game in the dark but as someone with a full time job, all my low ping servers are dark when I'm not at work, after 3 or 4 hours it got a bit tiresome.

[jovial 17]

I love the night, as I said I would love to play during the night the way it was meant, strategic use of light sources and what not (I loved doing night time ambushes in cities, putting flares here and there, and waiting for a hapless hero to run into the light :D). But most of the time, noone actually played on nighttime servers unless you had NVG. Now that NVG's are hopefully a lot more rare, playing on the public hive we might be forced to put up with the night, but that still leaves gamma settings. Fact is even if you don't want to, you'll most likely just turn up your gamma, nevermind that the game will look horrible and scorch your eyes, condemning your soul to hell in the process for such cheap metagaming.

 

So please Dean. just work around that premise instead, until you get to a point where people won't feel the incentive to up their gamma settings. Or until you can deem tweaking gamma settings an exploit or a hack, and police it (can't see how that would work).

[gaint 80]

But u have to stay verly close to the items until they appear in the  vicinity column of your inventory...

U will overlook the most items by running around in a pitch-dark house ^^

[enforcer1975 1111]

How about dean only makes 24/7 day servers with artificial lighting turning on when you are in a dark sport of a building and glowing loot so you never miss it so nobody shits their pants anymore? I'm also annoyed about beeing able to tell there is something or what it is even if it's pitch black. And get out of your cellars...even with a full moon and stars it can still be pitch black in buildings and outside, black is black and it's black because of the absence of light. Stars only don't light up the area. Guess why people centuries ago stayed at home when the sun went down...

Edited December 17, 2013 by Enforcer

[starwarsfan@gmx.de 450]

The most fun I had in DayZ Mod was at night running around with a flashlight. No way I want them to remove that. Just because most people are to sissy to use their flashlights, flares and chemlights.

 

I'd rather have people turn up their gamma than play in a night that really is just day in black and white.

[jovial 17]

The most fun I had in DayZ Mod was at night running around with a flashlight. No way I want them to remove that. Just because most people are to sissy to use their flashlights, flares and chemlights.

 

I'd rather have people turn up their gamma than play in a night that really is just day in black and white.

 

Except in one scenario, you still have something resembling night, and the other you have a washed up horrible looking playing experience. 

 

 

How about dean only makes 24/7 day servers with artificial lighting turning on when you are in a dark sport of a building and glowing loot so you never miss it so nobody shits their pants anymore? I'm also annoyed about beeing able to tell there is something or what it is even if it's pitch black. And get out of your cellars...even with a full moon and stars it can still be pitch black in buildings and outside, black is black and it's black because of the absence of light. Stars only don't light up the area. Guess why people centuries ago stayed at home when the sun went down...

 

No need to exaggerate, this isn't about missing loot, it's about the fact that most people can and will use gamma settings to cheat the night time anyway. If we are already doing this, why not try to come to some sort of middle ground, so we don't have to do it, and hopefully keep some immersion in the night.

[starwarsfan@gmx.de 450]

Except in one scenario, you still have something resembling night, and the other you have a washed up horrible looking playing experience. 

That's if you choose to fiddle with your gamma and that's on you, could just use a flashlight.

[jovial 17]

That's if you choose to fiddle with your gamma and that's on you, could just use a flashlight.

 

I believe most people will and have choosen to do this. It's pretty easy. Press escape, go into options, jack gamma all the way up. Or run around with a flashlight, placing yourself at a disadvantage versus the majority who won't be doing that. Inb4 a slew of "hardcore" players post "lol gammascrubs", "bro do u even flashlight?", etc. :)

[tehNuka 14]

Nighttime is all i can play at. I have daily job that help me paying my bills and i can't even see the day in the game playin' after work. TERRIBLE GAME DESIGN! Come on play some modern DayZ mod Bohemia! 24hrs day are on the 95% of servers and "3hrs day/3 hrs night" on the rest of them.

Edited December 17, 2013 by tehNuka

[SlickShoes 21]

Considering you have to eat about 60 or 70 times in 24 hours to stay alive, having the day/night cycle follow real life seems daft to me if the requirement to eat and drink doesn't.

[Grabarz (DayZ) 95]

Making night brighter would be a bad solution IMO. I've always been hoping they'd change the way the video gamma/brightness settings influence shadows at night.

It would be better if the black level would clip at a certain distance around the flashlight, where the light dropoff is sort of passing a threshold level of what the eyes perception would be.

This way you could influence from midtones upward, but everything too dark for the eyes would change from black to grey (or stay pitch black), without showing more detail.

Would be awesome if they could make it work like in ARMA3, although I haven't seen it for real, it seems to be perfect.

Just look at this post by SmashT: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/139346-remove-gamma-and-brightness-settings/?p=1366832

Edited December 17, 2013 by Grabarz

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

The problem is that people are idiots. The game is MORE fun at night , but everyone wants to have constant "easy" game play, so they will switch servers to day time ones and we will have the same thing that happened in the mod, totally empty night-time servers, 24/7 daytime servers etc.

 

It's more fun if you adapt to the game rather than trying to circumvent it.

[tehNuka 14]

The game is MORE fun at night 

 

I doubt it! Prove your point dude.

Edited December 17, 2013 by tehNuka

[Entaro (DayZ) 33]

The problem is that people are idiots. The game is MORE fun at night , but everyone wants to have constant "easy" game play, so they will switch servers to day time ones and we will have the same thing that happened in the mod, totally empty night-time servers, 24/7 daytime servers etc.

 

It's more fun if you adapt to the game rather than trying to circumvent it.

 

Its not all or nothing, and its not like you are a leet-dood for liking night, and the others are scrubs for wanting 24/7 day.  24 hour day just happens to be a very easy bandaid fix.

 

The fact that the cycle in DayZ is 24 hours realtime is the problem.  I think most people would be agreeable to some middleground system where it was a few hours of day followed by a few night, etc...  Not 12 and 12 for God's sake.  I work 9am-5pm. That means every time I play DayZ its night.  THAT isn't fun.

[marcjpb 5]

 

I dont have any problem with the night time but, like someone said, I only play Dayz when my kids are in bed, which is around 8-9 PM. I would love to see the dayz server to be on a shorter time schedule, like a full day in dayz is 10hrs. This way, if you play around the same time every time, you will experiance different gameplay.

 

I didnt play much yet but I really liked the concept of the night gameplay. I personally prefer day time but still enjoy night time.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

1: Its a zombie game, night time is scarier by it's very nature.

2: Conversely it's actually easier to avoid zombies at night as they can't see as well. So you can sneak past them, nice and tense, using the sounds to tell where they are etc.

3: The gameplay is more tactical. Yes you can use your torch, but it gives away your position. It's a great mechanic, enabling you to sneak up on people. Play carefully or risk being able to loot more effectively with you light on.

 

Example, I was looting a tower block in the dark, and I got stuck in a bloody room and couldn't find my way out so I risked using my torch to get out, as I came down the stairs I saw another torch beam approaching. we must have both noticed each others torches  because we both stopped and our lights both went out. What followed was a fun 20 minutes sneaking around trying to avoid this other guy looking for me in the dark, I ended up hiding in a bush as he snuck past me about 5 ft away, once his back was turned I could creep off into the woods. It was ace.

[tehNuka 14]

I work 9am-5pm. That means every time I play DayZ its night.  THAT isn't fun.

 

Agreed. This piss me off too.

This is a worst game design decision ever!

Edited December 17, 2013 by tehNuka

[SlickShoes 21]

1: Its a zombie game, night time is scarier by it's very nature.

2: Conversely it's actually easier to avoid zombies at night as they can't see as well. So you can sneak past them, nice and tense, using the sounds to tell where they are etc.

3: The gameplay is more tactical. Yes you can use your torch, but it gives away your position. It's a great mechanic, enabling you to sneak up on people. Play carefully or risk being able to loot more effectively with you light on.

 

Example, I was looting a tower block in the dark, and I got stuck in a bloody room and couldn't find my way out so I risked using my torch to get out, as I came down the stairs I saw another torch beam approaching. we must have both noticed each others torches  because we both stopped and our lights both went out. What followed was a fun 20 minutes sneaking around trying to avoid this other guy looking for me in the dark, I ended up hiding in a bush as he snuck past me about 5 ft away, once his back was turned I could creep off into the woods. It was ace.

 

Yeah, that's great but as others have said already we don't hate night time gameplay, we just work during the day so the only time we can play DayZ is when it is Dark. To have the game constantly be night time is as bad as it constantly being day time. The day/night cycle should not just mirror real life, I want to experience the changing environment not log in to total darkness every night.

 

If they are going to have the day/night cycle follow real life then eating/drinking should too, in 1 hour I don't have to eat 3 or 4 times to stay concious.

[jovial 17]

As some have said, the problem would be lessened if the day/night cycle was shorter. Though I really have a hard time understanding why someone would be opposed to a bright enough night that you'd mostly wouldn't need to alter gamma settings, unless you were visually impaired, etc. Yes, it is a blow to immersion and realism, but a much lesser blow than everyone using maxed gamma settings.

 

If there was a way to cut out changing gamma settings completely, I'd get behind the current night time, we'd all be flailing around with our flashlights in the dark. But I don't think this is possible.

[Grabarz (DayZ) 95]

The problem is that people are idiots. The game is MORE fun at night , but everyone wants to have constant "easy" game play, so they will switch servers to day time ones and we will have the same thing that happened in the mod, totally empty night-time servers, 24/7 daytime servers etc.

 

It's more fun if you adapt to the game rather than trying to circumvent it.

 

The way it is now, it's not more fun to play at night, because you are lierally forced to use a high gamma setting which makes night look like shit, but you have to do that, because otherwise you'd have a huge disadvantage compared to ppl who do.

 

Just in case tl;dr applies to my previous post, I put this here for convenience sake:

 

I like how they did it in ArmA 3

Edited December 17, 2013 by Grabarz